The latest episode in the war between music companies and their paying customers (the one where Sony decides it’s OK to surreptitiously take over your PC so you can’t make a copy of the music you thought you bought from them) has finally pushed me over the edge.
I’ve been a big buyer of prerecorded ‘media’ for over 35 years. I have two or three hundred vinyl LPs, several dozen 45’s, a hundred or so audio cassettes, and roughly 60 prerecorded reel-to-reel tapes. They are jammed in my closet with a couple hundred VHS tapes, 450 CDs, and 500-odd DVDs. (Mercifully, I skipped the 8-track, Betamax and laserdisc formats.)
Part of my media collection
I have to believe the record companies and movie studios would consider me a good customer. But with every day that passes it becomes more and more obvious that the greedy bastards who run these media companies prefer to treat me (and all their customers) like criminals. They continually expect us to pay more for less, and even then they are not satisfied. They want to pretend to ’sell’ us their product, but they don’t want us to actually have it. Well I’ve had enough.
From this day forward I will never spend a another dime on content that I can’t use the way I please. If I can’t copy it to my hard drive and play it using the devices I want, when and where I want, I won’t be buying it. Period.
They can all take their DRM, and their broadcast flags, and their rootkits, and their Compact Discs that aren’t really compact discs and shove them up their bottom-lines.
Additional Thoughts
Nov 11 – 8:50 AM
I’m blown away by the reactions my little tirade has produced. A raw nerve must have been hanging right out there in the open.
But there’s a few points I want to add/clarify.
- I said I was going to stop buying content that is burdened with these ridiculous and futile restrictions. I did not say I was going to start stealing that content. My point is to patronize only those companies that treat their customers with some respect.
- I forgot to mention the looming disaster of HD video on disc. Both of the competing HD disc standards will come equipped with the most monstrous, invasive, and customer-hating DRM ever devised by engineers and lawyers. If you want something to boycott, that would be it.
- Finally, a further rant. How did this shit come to be called copy protection? It is clearly intended to be copy prevention.
I’m with you.
Wait. Does that mean you’ll also be giving up on the iTunes Music Store? (unless by “the devices I want” you mean the iPod).
Nuno Sousa: If you are trying to use some odd device that doesn’t have support for protected aac, you can still burn cds using songs buyed from iTMS. Cds which are fully ripable.
That’s a lot better than some of the other stores, and a lot of the DRMed cds.
Nuno – Glad you brought that up. I’ve spent a lot at the iTunes Store, and feel that its restrictions are less objectionable than most others. But I still have to resort to third-party tools or the burn-rip two-step to remove the shackles so I can play my music with my Roku player.
More power to you. Paying customers shouldn’t have to put up with this crap.
Try http://www.allofmp3.com , its legal, up to 320kb/s bit rate in any format, and totally no DRM. Plus it costs about 10-15 cents per song and sounds great on my iPod.
Steve – that site is most definitely NOT legal (not even in Russia). But I love it anyway.
Here’s a little background info from the BBC.
I don’t get it. The BBC article says that Russian copyright law does not cover digital music, so how is it not legal?
ALLOFMP3 claims they have a license to distribute the music, but the responsible organization says they don’t. Here’s the key quote: “… the IFPI said the site was ‘unlicensed to distribute our members’ repertoire inside Russia and in all major markets”.
They are taking advantage of the gray area between legality and the difficulty of prosecuting in a country that has much bigger problems to worry about. But rest assured that the RIAA and their band of thugs will bring this down eventually.
I got the same feeling like you.
same to me Mike…
thx to write down my thought’s…
cheers
Stefan
Regardless of the legal status of allofmp3, this is a service that provides exactly what the customer wants. High quality encoded tracks, in the format of choice and without DRM. Heck, I own an iPod and a Windows Smartphone. I’m not buying a track twice to listen to it where I want.
I’ve tried iTunes but find the tracks too expensive for the encoding quality and DRM restrictions (burning to CD and re-ripping will only lead to an even lower audio quality).
Napster with its music subscription (which I’ve tried) is good to try out new tracks, but the software is really REALLY bad and no way am I going to trust my precious music collection to it. I’m also not going to be conned by ‘Playforsure’ branding. My CD player works very nicely thank you very much.
What next? Hopefully DRM will die a death as soon as consumers wise-up and tracks will be provided at full CD (or better) quality in the format of choice. The utopian vision is where artists can cut out the record labels completely (look at Marillion, Julian Cope, Saint Ettienne etc). They can then provide music to fans who are willing to pay the cost, an implied contract of trust.
Enough of my ramblings. Have a nice day.
This store: http://www.eclassical.com sells legal MP3’s with classical
music. 192 kbit/s, no DRM whatsoever.
They also have a generous guarantee: If you don’t like the music,
you’ll get the money back – no questions asked.
They have been around since 1999.
/Razor
I feel like my computer trespassed by Sonys’ DRM which lowers my respectness to this Label Name.
Mike, its good to see that even people like you think the same way. It really riles me to know that you actually do not own what you have paid for!. And to top it, you may be sued for using the same music that you have paid for. It kinda makes me want to publish a site with all my music for free download….hmm…with a server somewhere in russia!